Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Through the Plague”

hands on their walking sticks and stared at the ground. To everyone’s surprise, when they told Hadji Dragan who they were and why they had come, he immediately let them in. Hadji Dragan’s yard seemed different than the one the old men had known. The servant walking in front of them seemed to be stepping on his toes, his demeanor timid. None of Hadji Dra gan’s large family could be seen in the yard, and the big Anatolian dogs did not even move on their leashes. But twigs of large yellow quince trees were showing through the garden fence, and the old men thought that if they looked so beautiful, it was because there would soon be no hands to tear them off. When they reached under the vines and looked up, there were not as many leaves as there were grapes. And these black, big bunches seemed to them likewise to presage a calamity. They found Hadji Dragan upstairs in his room, sitting cross legged on the sofa, with a chibouk in his hand, and five or six other empty chibouks lined up on the wall behind him. In front of him on the red carpet stood a cup of coffee, and thin strips of tobacco smoke were floating in the beam of sunlight that entered through the window. The old men silently walked in, wearing soft leather slippers, and sat on the pillows. Hadji Dragan was not very fond of talking and directly asked them what had brought them to him. Grandpa Neyko started talking wisely, measuredly, and slow ly - first about the plague, about the villagers’ fear, then about the in creasing poverty, and he was just about to start talking about the im minent hunger, when Tiha, Hadji Dragan’s daughter, came into the room. She brought coffee for everyone. The old men were relieved to see at least one cheerful soul in the house. Tiha’s eyes, elongated and black like plums, were still shining devilishly, her hair was neatly tucked away on the sides, and her cheeks were as fresh peaches. She couldn’t help but joke as she was handing the cups to the old men. She managed to whisper to them without her father hearing her, that she wondered how the plague had not taken such old people as them. 189